{"id":6611,"date":"2024-10-23T13:05:07","date_gmt":"2024-10-23T17:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=6611"},"modified":"2024-10-23T13:05:07","modified_gmt":"2024-10-23T17:05:07","slug":"a-quiet-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/23\/a-quiet-place\/","title":{"rendered":"A Quiet Place"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"A Quiet Place <\/strong>(2018)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (terror, some bloody images)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John Krasinski\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bryan Woods, Scott Beck and John Krasinski\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Marco Beltrami\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Charlotte Bruus Christensen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 6, 2018 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Cade Woodward.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $188M (US)\/$341M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0I could sit here and tell you that A Quiet Place<\/strong> is a scary monster movie and leave it at that, but I\u2019d be doing the movie a great disservice. Technically, it\u2019s true. A Quiet Place<\/strong> has monsters and they are quite scary, but it goes beyond that. It\u2019s not just an effective horror film; it\u2019s also a metaphor for family life. It\u2019s about a parent\u2019s natural instinct to protect their young from dangerous outside forces that threaten to tear apart the family unit and the guilt they feel when they fail to do so. In this particular case, the outside forces are large carnivorous creatures that hunt by sound. If you make any noise, they\u2019ll find you and kill you. The only solution is to live in silence.<\/p>\n

\u00a0At some point in the very near-future, the world population is reduced drastically by an alien invasion. At least I think it\u2019s an alien invasion; the movie never comes right out and says it, a recurring motif in A Quiet Place<\/strong>. It opens in media res with a family – Dad (Krasinski, The Office), Mom (Blunt, Sicario), hearing-impaired daughter (Simmonds, Wonderstruck) and hearing son (Jupe, Wonder)- scavenging for supplies in an abandoned supermarket. It\u2019s 89 days into the new world situation. The family tries to remain as silent as possible. They walk around barefoot, communicate by sign language and delicately take items from the shelves. The problem is that kids, by nature, are noisy. There\u2019s a younger son (Woodward) who wants a battery-powered toy rocket. The father takes it away from him. The daughter secretly gives it back to the boy. The kid puts the batteries back in and turns it on while they\u2019re walking home. The father tries to get to him, but doesn\u2019t make it in time. It\u2019s bye-bye for the little guy.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The story jumps ahead about a year. The family is still grieving for their deceased child. The daughter thinks her father blames her for what happened. He tries to be a good, supportive father, but she doesn\u2019t believe it. It drives a wedge between the two. Mom is very pregnant. She could give birth at any time. This is especially difficult in a world where the slightest sound can get you killed. A soundproof room is being set up for the baby. One day, Dad takes his son into the woods to teach him survival skills. The daughter, angry that she wasn\u2019t included, goes off to visit her brother\u2019s gravesite. Mom is home alone when she starts to go into labor. She manages to keep it together until she steps on a nail. Noise is made and the predators come calling. Will they survive the night?<\/p>\n

\u00a0Krasinski, who also directs and co-writes, has come a long way as a filmmaker. I wasn\u2019t a big fan of last year\u2019s dysfunctional family comedy-drama The Hollars. If I\u2019m being honest, I forgot all about it until I looked up Krasinski\u2019s resume on IMDb. A Quiet Place<\/strong> is a HUGE step up. Horror isn\u2019t the easiest genre. It\u2019s one thing to startle audiences with sudden loud sounds or something suddenly jumping into the frame. It\u2019s fun for a moment, but that\u2019s it. It\u2019s over, done with, onto the next \u201cBOO!\u201d moment. It\u2019s quite another to unnerve viewers. It\u2019s not enough just to engage the viewer; you have to get them invested in the characters AND the situation. You have to draw them in. The viewer must become an active participant in the game of terror not just a passive observer. A Quiet Place<\/strong> has its share of good \u201cBOO!\u201d scenes. It also succeeds in making the viewers feel unnerved. At times, the tension is so thick that you can cut it with a knife. Krasinski has created a truly frightening post-apocalyptic world where you literally have to watch your step (lest you step on a leaf or fallen branch).<\/p>\n

\u00a0A world like the one depicted in A Quiet Place<\/strong> is hard to imagine. We live in a noisy world. We are surrounded by sound. As I write this, I\u2019m listening to music. And then there\u2019s the talking. People talk and talk and talk. Many times, people talk over rather than with each other. We all have this unconscious need to fill the aural space around us. What would happen if we had to permanently put our lives on mute? What if it wasn\u2019t safe to speak anymore? Krasinski almost perfectly realizes this in A Quiet Place<\/strong>. There\u2019s almost no spoken dialogue. Krasinski relies on visual language instead to drive the narrative. For example, we find out what happened to the world we knew by way of newspaper headlines, missing person fliers and posted notices from the military telling the remaining survivors they\u2019re on their own. We understand the tension between father and daughter by the intensity of their signing to each other. Krasinski also has an excellent sense of composition. Each shot is carefully crafted. He doesn\u2019t fall back on cheap tricks like shaky camerawork to scare the viewer.<\/p>\n

\u00a0However, Krasinski makes one big creative misstep. Was it really necessary to include a score? I realize that the score is a big part of horror movies. It signals potential danger ahead. Normally, a good score works in the movie\u2019s favor. A Quiet Place<\/strong> is not a normal situation. In a world without sound, any score would come across as intrusive. In a world where the inhabitants can\u2019t warn each other of impending danger, it\u2019s not fair the audience knows something is coming. If anything, it\u2019s a crutch. Maybe the producers felt it would make A Quiet Place<\/strong> more commercial? I say Krasinski should have followed through with his concept and insisted on a score-free movie. The \u201cBOO!\u201d scenes would have been more effective than they already are.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Krasinski does succeed in another crucial area though. He gets great performances from his cast. He\u2019s very good as the patriarch of the clan. It\u2019s his job to protect and provide. He can\u2019t get past failing to protect his youngest child so he\u2019s determined to keep the others safe. Blunt, Krasinski\u2019s wife in real life too, is also good as the mother with a reserve of strength she doesn\u2019t know she has. Top honors go to Simmonds. She\u2019s amazing as a child with an extra disadvantage. Because she can\u2019t hear, there\u2019s no way she can hear the aliens if they approach. There\u2019s also no way for her to know if she accidentally makes a sound. Then, of course, there\u2019s the usual young teen angst. She feels out of place in her family because of what happened to her baby brother.<\/p>\n

\u00a0A Quiet Place<\/strong> is a lean, mean monster movie with plenty of great jump-scares and a compelling storyline. This world is truly a frightening place. Krasinski gets all of this across without resorting to the usual crap- e.g. shaky camerawork, CGI, overediting- typically used by horror filmmakers. What\u2019s even more impressive is that A Quiet Place<\/strong> is his first foray into the genre. The guy is a natural. He gets it. It doesn\u2019t even matter that it\u2019s rated PG-13. It doesn\u2019t feel watered-down at all. It\u2019s not just a scary movie, it\u2019s a terrifying experience.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Quiet Place (2018)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Paramount\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 90 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (terror, some bloody images)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: John Krasinski\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bryan Woods, Scott Beck and John Krasinski\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Marco Beltrami\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Charlotte Bruus Christensen\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: April 6, 2018 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Cade Woodward.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $188M (US)\/$341M (World) Rating: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6815,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/A-Quiet-Place-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6611"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6817,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6611\/revisions\/6817"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}